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Comment by roognarook | Hacker News Reader

Ever think about trying embedded development?

It doesn't pay as well as web development. But it moves more slowly, it's not going anywhere, and it can be a stepping stone towards getting to work with your hands in a technical role.

As a more general response to OP's question, you can always switch industries. We're lucky to work with code, because everything runs on it. Finance, agriculture, medicine, vehicles...moving to a different area of the economy can feel refreshing, and it gives you a chance to learn about things that are unrelated to coding. Soulless web dev is where the big money is, but you won't starve working in other areas.

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As an embedded systems guy(Hardware guy who works "on"embedded firmware), i can attest to the fact that its not going anywhere, but caveat emptor, Its glacial growth when you consider career growth and salaries. Also, the tech stack is tied to a couple of big name tooling chain vendors and chip vendors. And after writing the same old I2C/SPI driver for the nth time, you start feeling like the OP. So grass is always greener on the other side.

Isn't a majority of the industry Electrical Engineers who know how to code? You also have a lot more physical hardware constraints to work around unlike standard computers where the lowest baseline is still quite a bit for standard app dev.

Nope! Maybe the trend is that a lot of kids these days double major( in the us) and end up with some passable programming skills. It’s still not the primary focus. Like you mentioned the focus is working with physical constraints in a cross functional environment

The company I interned at did timer and wall din switches which were pretty interesting. They were timid letting me do much programming because it was freshman -> sophomore summer so I basically tackled a counter on one of their wall outlet timers that adjusted with a knob on the front and realized the embedded world was not for me haha. It is REALLY cool to hold your code in your hands, though.

It seems a little easier to go from embedded to app dev than vice versa, harder still to think up a personal project involving embedded to get you excited enough to invest the time into learning by hands-on trial and error.

I’d be interested in some started points, books, etc. to embedded, even beginner ELI5 fun projects. I am familiar to RPis, ESPs and similar microcontrollers for fun, but curious about what career and industry practices are common and different compared to app dev.

> agriculture

This I did not know.

> vehicles

This I hoped would never happen (security and privacy) - but anyway. (It has been a problem for well over a full decade, I know.) Anyway, as said, there is some light side: providing features while defending as much as possible security and privacy is a stimulating goal. One would feel more comfortable, though, if that were an established, common, given, granted goal.

Agriculture is more and more based on computers than ever. Massive expensive tractors with computers inside, that collect and visualize a tons of data as farmers tend to the fields. I watched a couple of farming videos online and it surprised me just how much they're integrated now.

https://www.theverge.com/22533735/john-deere-cto-hindman-dec...

thanks for the suggestion, will look into it.

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